Justin continued to meet that stormy gaze as he answered her huskily. ‘Yes, I am.’
She grimaced. ‘There is your answer then.’
‘What if I were to say I am already in love with you, and was willing to wait, in the hope that you would eventually fall in love with me too?’
Her face paled as she shook her head. ‘You do not love me.’
Justin had spent years hiding his emotions behind a barrier of arrogance and cynicism, out of a desire, he now knew, not to be hurt and rejected again. There was no place between them for that barrier now.
Nor did he attempt to prevent that barrier from falling away from his emotions, as he moved down on one knee in front of her. ‘I love you more than life itself, Eleanor Rosewood-Anderson,’ he stated clearly. ‘More than anything or anyone. If you feel anything for me at all, desire or even only liking, then would you please marry me and allow me the opportunity to show you my love, prove it to you, and perhaps one day persuade you into loving me in return?’
Ellie felt numb as she stared down at him, sure that this usually proud man could not just have declared on bended knee that he was in love with her and that he wished to make her his duchess.
‘There will never be anyone else for me, Eleanor,’ he continued fervently at her continued silence. ‘Much as I did not want to ever fall in love with any woman, I know that I love you beyond life itself. I think I’ve been in love with you since the night of my grandmother’s illness when you summoned me here—which was not a true illness, by the way, but a wilful machination on her part to persuade me into moving back here—and then you brought me to task for my tardiness.’
‘The dowager was not really ill?’ Ellie found it safer to focus on that part of his statement rather than those other wonderful—unbelievable!—things he was saying to her.
‘Not in the least,’ Justin said with a twinkle. ‘Nor was it my true reason for moving back to Royston House.’
‘What was your true reason?’ Ellie’s heart was now beating so loudly in her chest she felt sure he must be able to hear it. Justin had said that he loved her. More than anyone and anything. Beyond life itself!
‘To protect you,’ he revealed grimly. ‘From Litchfield and other men like him.’ He sighed deeply before admitting, ‘Also I know now that I was beside myself with jealously of the attentions being shown to you by so many younger men. It was my intention to thwart those attentions as often as possible.’
Justin had been jealous? The proud, the haughty, the arrogant, the self-assured Duke of Royston, the man who gave the impression of needing no one, had been jealous of the attentions shown to her by dandified young boys like Lord Charles Endicott? Did Justin not know—could he not see that no other man existed for her but him? That they never had, and never would?
‘Oh, Justin...!’ Eleanor sank gracefully to her knees in front of him before raising her hands to cup either side of his dearly beloved face. ‘I have loved you for months now. Have fallen even more deeply in love with you this past week or more. I will always love you, Justin. I could not have responded to you as I do, have made love with you in the way we have, if I was not already in love with you!’
Such an expression of joy lit up his face at her declaration, a glow in the deep blue of his eyes, his cheeks flushing, the wideness of his smile making him appear almost boyish. ‘How much I love you, Eleanor!’ He swept her into his arms, cradling her against him as if she were the most precious being upon the earth. ‘Please marry me and be my duchess,’ he pleaded as he moved back slightly to look at her with all of that love shining in his eyes. ‘I promise you will never ever have cause to regret it.’
‘Yes! Oh, yes, Justin, I will marry you!’ Eleanor’s expression was as joyous as his as she launched herself into his arms and the two of them became lost in the wonder of their love for each other.
* * *
One floor below them, in the Blue Salon, Edith St Just smiled with a quiet inner satisfaction at the knowledge that, on the morrow, she would be able to show her two closest friends the name of the young lady, written on a piece of paper to be held in safekeeping by Lady Jocelyn’s butler, in which she had predicted who would become Royston’s duchess.
That name was Miss Eleanor Rosewood...
* * * * *
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ISBN-13: 9781460322987
NOT JUST A WALLFLOWER
Copyright © 2013 by Carole Mortimer
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